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चैत्र कृष्ण पक्ष, शुक्रवार, चर्तुथी

News

Militants wanted to go to a mosque, travel to Kashmir


Date:- 14 Sep 2018


Inderjeet Singh   

Family taken hostage recounts the trauma that lasted over an hour

Nonagenarian Ishar Dass Khajuria and his family had a harrowing time on Wednesday night when three gun-wielding militants, who were hiding in the Jhajjar Kotli forest area, kept them hostage for one and a half hours and asked them to arrange a vehicle so that they could travel to Kashmir.

The family is still in shock and is trying to recover from the mental trauma it faced during the militants' stay at their home. The militants had taken away their mobile phones so that they could not communicate with anyone.

“Around 8 pm, militants, carrying bags, weapons and explosives, entered our house. Four members of the family, including my daughter-in-law Geeta Devi and two grandchildren, were present in the house. Their language was a mix of Punjabi and Hindi. They asked us to arrange food for them as they had not eaten for the past three days,” said Ishar Dass.

He said: “We told them we will prepare something for them but they refused. We offered them biscuits and apples. They seized our mobile phones. My daughter-in-law panicked on seeing them and fell unconscious but one of them asked us not to panic.

“They asked us to arrange a vehicle for them so that they could travel to Kashmir but we expressed our helplessness. They then asked us the location of the mosque, but being a Hindu-dominated area, we told them there was no mosque.”

Ishar Dass said: “They told us that they had come from Pakistan and it had taken them three days to reach here. Though they did not harm us, we are in a shock.”

Ishar Dass’s son Sudershan said the militants wanted to take his son Abhishek along but the family resisted and surprisingly, the militants didn’t object to it. He said they then disappeared into the forest.

“As the militants left, we locked our house and spent the night with our neighbour’s because we were scared. Many families in the locality locked their houses and shifted to their relatives’ places due to fear,” he said.

Courtesy: Tribune: 14th Sep, 2018 Jhajjar Kotli